How Social Support Nourishes the Brain and Helps You Live Longer

“I’ll just take care of it myself.” 

“I’ll figure out how to get through it on my own.” 

“I’m ashamed, I’ll keep it to myself.” 

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” 

“I’ll just pick myself up by the bootstraps.” 

“No one will understand, so I won’t say anything about it.” 

“No one else is talking about it, why should I?” 

These are some phrases I hear a lot of, and for a good portion of my life I let this “lone wolf” mindset dictate my actions. However, as I gain more life experience and get longer in the tooth (you’re old if you know “long in the tooth” is a reference to getting old), I’ve come to realize that the lone-wolf mindset is a way to get nowhere fast. I, and all of us, need social support.

Even if I can do something well on my own, I’ll need some amount of help with it. There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman; human beings are meant to work as a collective (of varying degrees).

Social support is tremendously important and provides much-needed nourishment, contributing to a healthy or healthier brain.

Studies have shown that without social support or with minimal social support, there is an increased risk of depression, alcohol use, suicide ideation and attempts, cardiovascular disease, and diminished brain function.

Social support can improve motivation and can help in rational and healthy decision making. We typically think of peer pressure as a bad thing and something to be avoided. But peers and social groups can influence you in a more positive way and help you engage in healthier behaviors. You want to quit an unhealthy habit? It’s much easier when you have the support of the people around you. You want to improve a skill or personal attribute? Spend more time with someone whose skill you can learn from or someone whom you admire for the attribute you want to improve upon. You are the company you keep.

Finding support is crucial but the support you provide to others is not to be overlooked either.

Helping others provides a sense of meaning. In one sociological study, Americans who described themselves as “very happy” volunteered at least 5.8 hours per month. Another study showed that seniors who volunteered 200 hours per year decreased their risk for hypertension by 40 percent. You can help people in a variety of ways and for many different reasons. Help a kid tie their shoe, you can provide meals to the homeless, or work as an elected public servant. You can offer support for love, to build your skillset and expertise, or with the expectation of some reciprocal action.

Take time to check in with your support system on a regular basis, giving and taking without keeping score.

Creating a Mental Nutrition Plan

Many of us are familiar with a nutrition plan that involves food and exercise. But not nearly as many are familiar with the idea of creating a nutrition plan for the health of your brain and mental state. If you want your brain and your life to be running at peak performance, then it’s a good idea to create a mental nutrition plan for yourself. And think about it much like the food pyramid that was so popular back in the 1980s and 90s. There are 6 major mental nutrition “food groups.” 

1. Things you consume which can include food, supplements, alcohol, drugs. 
2. Relaxation activities or self-care. 
3. Reflection. 
4. Energetic activities or exercise. 
5. Service based activities. 
6. Your support system.

After creating your mental nutrition plan, check in with it and check in with yourself on a weekly basis. What part of the plan were you consistent with and how are you feeling based on the actions you took? If you need to adjust and find that you need to spend 10% more time on self-care and 5% less time on reflection during the week then go for it. And be gentle with yourself—like a food nutrition plan, you’re allowed to have junk food once in awhile and some plans involve cheat days. Don’t go overboard with the metaphorical junk food but keep an eye on it.

You've heard that you are what you eat; well you are what you feed your brain too. Mental nutrition is important, it matters, and so do you.

Energetic Activities: A Major “Food Group” For Mental Nutrition

When exercising or doing things that involve any level of physical activity, the real or perceived impact of the activity is almost always measured with a focus on the external.

• The loss of weight or lowering one’s BMI
• How much faster you were able to do said activity
• How one looks as a result (thinner or more muscular or more toned)
• Rosier cheeks
• Looking healthier

All of these are noble when accompanied with proper balance and a healthy mindset.

However, the impact of energetic activities (or at times, lack thereof) is not often enough measured in an improvement in how one is feeling, the quality of their thought life, and how it can help provide healthy balance, perspective, and energy to one’s daily life.

Energetic activities can and should be one of six core, major groups that form one’s mental nutrition pyramid. 

Energetic activities have been proven reduce anxiety and depression, and improve mood and one’s motivation. It improves cardiovascular function (ain’t nobody got time for heart disease), and can mitigate the effects of stress.

Energetic activities aren’t only “gym” activities; they can include: stretching, laughing, walking, sex, playing outside, building things, or anything that increases your heart rate to beat a bit more rapidly.

Simple lifestyle modifications can help you engage in more energetic activities. This can include taking one flight of stairs instead of the elevator or walking through the airport instead of standing still on the people mover (the horizontal escalator thingy).

We need to be intentional about our energetic activities so that when we get busy or when something comes up, we don’t push our preferred energetic activities to the side.

Schedule your activity or activities in your calendar or put up a post it note on your bathroom mirror—there are so many ways to find and make time. You can add it to a vision board or create a visual system where you keep track of how often you meet your energetic activities goals and then reward yourself at certain points during your progress.

Start out small if you must. Incremental changes make the biggest differences over a long period of time. Rather than trying to run twenty miles per week, how about twenty minutes? If you want to increase time or distance at some point, then go for it but the most important part is first creating healthy habits (that goes for any one of the six core groups of your mental nutrition) and then becoming aware of what benefits these new habits have on your life. If you miss your mark or lose steam, that’s okay. You’re a human being and you’re trying your best. Your main goal is not a specific number or to beat a time or to weigh a certain amount; it’s to create the healthiest, happiest, most well-adjusted version of you as possible.

How to Effectively Deal with Difficulty or Failure

This is about retraining the brain. Instead of asking why this is happening to you; CHOOSE to acknowledge that everything is happening FOR you and not TO you. This is the first step in leading toward a more solutions-based mindset that will then lead you away from the thing that isn’t working and toward your vision of what “success” looks like.

You can of course, take time to mourn the failure or thing that didn't work, but at some point soon after take time to reflect on what you can learn from the failure and how you can pivot and eventually turn that loss into a win. Everything happens for a reason but only if you choose that mindset.

Take a look at your coping skills and mechanisms. Avoiding dealing with the failure or numbing the pain with alcohol or substances or excessive anything is not a solution and will only prolong the pain and might even make the effects of the failure worse. Instead, go back to reframing the failure as a lesson and find ways to cope by taking care of your physical and mental wellness. 

Take responsibility if it's required and be vulnerable with the person, persons, or entity who was affected by the failure. If it’s appropriate, express that you wish to work toward a more successful outcome and ask for feedback and assistance if necessary.

And don’t forget to forgive yourself. You are a human being and doing the best you can with the information you have at the moment.

Lean into failure—own it, wrestle with it, and learn from it. Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it simply allows you to move closer toward success. You’ve bounced back before and you’ll do it again.